Hackney Pubs - I wish I hadn't bothered. 

It'd be awesome if he just got super drunk by the end of every video and the history just gets more and more completely incorrect and just made up :D

Thank you for the kind words! I think it is still a bit of a niche area of interest, particularly given the history slant - and my opinions on things (especially beer) would probably not find favour with everyone! So maybe there's a limit to how big the audience might grow but I feel pleased to have got this far. I'm still surprised there aren't more channels about pubs on RU-vid. There are of course other channels which cover London, and throw in the odd pub along the way (John Rogers, Joolz Guides, RobsLondon etc) but really not that many which are just about pubs and/or pub history.

Perhaps but there’s 1ksof similar channels AND it’s up to Greedy YT/giggle who gets promoted

I have been telling as many folk as possible about this channel. Considering the age and reach of CAMRA, I cannot believe they haven't done something similar.

I just discovered it and it is right up my alley. Oddly I am a resident of the USA that has only visited London twice, but I am quite the fan of both pubs and history, so this is going to be one of my favorite channels!

Thanks Andrew, and I really appreciate your positive take on what was a bit of a disappointing afternoon out! I suppose there were some glints of rough diamonds here and there: I know I was quite sniffy about the Ship but in hindsight something about the almost buried vestiges of a more aesthetic age in amongst that modern hip ephemera was oddly satisfying. Any port in a storm! If you'll pardon the pun.

I suspect most of them hadn't even got out of bed by the time I left Hackney.

I thought that too, as Hackney seems to have something of a 'reputation' for crime, assault etc...

It’s pretty safe tbh. Clearly not been to a proper rough area.

Tweedy strikes again ! Another great vid , thank you mate ✅

​@@VincentComet-l8ethem days are long gone like Brixton nothing like the 80's

Thank you! Very pleased to hear you enjoy the maps and newspaper clippings - I do sometimes worry some people might start to zone out at that point in the videos! Finding those old documents can often be the most fun part of making the videos for me - to begin with I just used those sources to try and prove or disprove claimed dates for when a pub was first established... but they often throw up interesting stories which really bring the history of the pub to life for me.

He's Defo got the provenance and diligence going for him and I subbed immediately today upon watching this,my first upload, I think he'll swipe aside the many who simply enter, have an ale then talk bollox about the locals. Plus I mentioned that YT promoted this to me and I only caught a single similar stream last week so I don't see him losing, best wishes to you all and England tomorrow night ⚽.🤗😎📚

I was focusing on historic Hackney - based on what would have existed at, say, the time of John Rocque's 1746 map.

@@TweedyPubs Half way down Hackney Rd the remnants of the Victorian Nags Head can be found, I have 1703 map showing an inn with the same name in same location.

Cheaper than a pint.

Thank you Mr WC21! Perhaps this is one of those outings I will remember more fondly in hindsight? This felt a bit like a form of urban archaeology! What little vestiges remained of traditional pub architecture and interior design were generally very well buried in the grime and the hipster ephemera but I suppose that made them more gratifying to uncover. Yes I found the Mermaid really caught my attention too - especially once I found that wonderful Hogarth-esque painting of 1811. It's such a riot of colour and it really looks like the attendees were having a great time. Hard to imagine that scene turning into the rather depressing streetscape we see today.

whats the roughest pub in Hackney

The Blipple Nipple

The dolphin is a night club not really a pub now

Thanks Lee! I quite agree - each to their own. It would be very self centred of me to expect every single pub to cater solely to my tastes, and it's completely normal and appropriate that different pubs tailor their offering to different crowds. ...but it seemed like here in Hackney there wasn't a single pub with a genuine traditional interior serving traditional English beer. If I had found just one place serving a decent pint of bitter I would have been much happier!

Thanks Seán! Palmers Green isn't an area I know but I'll take a look.

Still the bus garage is around and the Fox pub is still there . I would imagine a pint in Hackney would be £7!

Thank you! I had always assumed you weren't particularly interested in London (understandably, let's face it I'd rather have been out in the countryside on this particular afternoon) so it feels like an honour that you've watched this, more so because I'm not sure I particularly enjoyed the outing! When doing these pub videos I use my phone for the interior shots, as the GoPro struggles a bit indoors. Actually I use the phone for some of the exterior shots too, as my phone at least pretends to have a zoom (it doesn't really of course). If I were the sort of RU-vidr who took a bit more pride in his work I might attempt to colour correct all of the footage to compensate for that, but on this occasion I just wanted this to be over and done with! I suspect Hackney would have been a far more visually appealing place in the 18th century, so on that level I agree with you - the maps were probably the best part of this! I always fear my ability to communicate will deteriorate noticeably towards the end if I go to five pubs and drink a pint at each, and it might be a bit unfair on the final pub in particular in terms of my ability to give a fair assessment of its architectural merits... I doubt those sorts of petty concerns would have troubled Floyd!

Thank you! New subscribers always very much appreciated and I'm happy to hear you like the format.

Thanks John! Yes I feel like we're in a real nadir for pub interior preservation. I get the sense there was another bad bout of it in the 1960s when there was a thirst for modernisation, and a lot of pubs lots their internal partitions. Then it felt like that calmed down a bit in the 70s and 80s... but then it flared up again in the 90s, probably in part due to all those home improvement shows on the TV. I sometimes feel like I'm shouting into the wind when it comes to the scourge of grapefruit beer so it's nice that at least some people here appear to have similar sentiments! Yesterday at my local the three guest beers on the hand pumps were an "American IPA", an "American Pale Ale" and one simply labelled a pale ale (which on enquiring turned out to also be made with American hops). Grapefruit as far as the eye could see! Is it really too much to ask that a traditional English pub serves some traditional English beer?

@@TweedyPubs Absolutely, it did appear to gain momentum in the 90s, there were still plenty of nice characterful pubs in the 80s but many have gone or been ruined. God forbid, if we do lose them, at least we've got your record of what's left at the moment. And keep shouting about the terrible beer, three pumps of alcoholic grapefruit is really unacceptable!

whats the roughest pub in Hackney

Thanks Steve - the droving routes make sense, I also saw hints of that in other nearby areas I've visited recently, like Hoxton and Islington. I think there was also sheep farming in the area itself though. I did a quick newspaper search just now and found an article from 1742 that a man ninety years of age was "taken in the Marsh at Hackney for stealing of Sheep". You can see the fields (apparently marshy) around Hackney on John Rocque's 1746 map featured a few times in this video. That also plays into the debate about whether or not the term "Hackney carriage" actually comes from Hackney - there are those who say Hackney was at one time a place where horses were reared, but others doubt this because the ground was too marshy, which is apparently not good for horses. Sheep don't mind marshy ground though - plenty of examples today of places like Romney Marsh where the tradition of sheep farming continues.

Think you mean the Pembury Tavern?

Perhaps the landlord at the time was taking an entirely reasonable course of action after all then!

It's a bit special isn't it? Given that evolution was still a radical notion in the mid 19th century it is to be expected this was a bit of a contentious issue, but what's surprising is that it seems it was the pro-evolution guy who was the aggressor here!

Funny that they put a wager on it - the winner has to prove or disprove the existence of God basically, so difficult to know how it would have been settled if they hadn't gone for the violence option!

Thanks Ed! Yes I probably should have gone into the Crown, and that might well have changed the tone of the whole video... The sequencing in the video is a bit out of order: the bit where I was waiting around for the Dolphin to open was actually after I had been to the other four pubs Trying to kill time in Hackney really seemed to instill in me a sense that I didn't belong there! Your wife sounds like a keeper!

Appreciated! Not a very fun outing but I guess there's something satisfying about being able to say I'm not really a fan of what Hackney has to offer on the pub front from a point of experience rather than just lazily dismissing it based on hearsay.

Yes I think with Belgian beers my hesitance is more down to lack of knowledge rather than having any particular aversion... Although I would much rather enjoy learning about them in Belgium rather than here! When in Rome and all that. As for a "craft beer pub crawl" though I think that highly unlikely. 😁

@@TweedyPubs 😂 Appreciate all the research and effort into your videos.

It's been gentrified by the mostly white middle classes for a good few years now

Your predictions about the beer were pretty much on the money! No flying ants yet this year - somehow it's the middle of June but summer still feels like a very distant prospect!

I'm not nearly as averse to Belgian beer as I am to those grapefruitey pale ales - I just need to be in the right frame of mind! If I had walked through the door thinking "this is a Belgian beer bar" I could probably have had a great time but after a series of slightly disappointing pubs beforehand I was hankering for a traditional English pub at that point!

I felt very out of place there, and although I try very hard to not get political in these videos, yes the "blue haired people" as you put it were a big part of that.

The autophobic, woke smotherloves and joy killers. These creatures don't want anyone to be happy...they want parity of misery.

I think I would have been happier in Knightsbridge - I suppose both areas have seen big changes over the last few decades, but at least in Knightsbridge there has been some recognition (albeit it probably from a cynical commercial perspective) that it was worth preserving some of the pubs, to cater to the tourists.

@@TweedyPubs Glad to hear they're preserving them in Knightsbridge even if it's just for tourist folk like me haha. Millions across the globe have an interest in London as it's a true "World City." Keep up the great work. Thanks!

@@argopunk I have lived in London nearly 20 years but I wasn't born and raised here so I still feel a bit like a tourist sometimes!

@@TweedyPubs Based on your knowledge, it might as well be 200 years. Good for you. Here's a London tourist observation you may find interesting: About ten years ago, I found what looked like a real neighbourhood pub in Bloomsbury. I walked in and the whole place went silent. I'm a pretty solidly-built guy, and I noticed the "hard man" of the pub staring intently at me as I approached the bar. I ordered a pint and once everyone heard my "American" accent (Canadian), they all relaxed. I was wearing a sporty polo shirt that apparently had the wrong colours for that pub hence their concern. Clearly I know nothing about British football pub protocol. The places you explore seem to be without that issue.

It's an interesting observation - I don't live too far from Camden Town, but I hardly ever go to any of the pubs there. I suppose there are parallels in that both areas seem to be heavily focused on some kind of "youth" culture, but I think the average Hackney-ite would consider Camden deeply uncool, and vice verse.

@@TweedyPubs Reminded me of the pubs in a Joolz vid about Camden.

Eagle, wick road if anywhere these days. Shakespeare or the salmon just up the road in Bethnal Green still have an edge

Oh you're not missing much - unless you enjoy the pub equivalent of a horror movie!

You're joking!....the only way you'd get mugged is by a yuppie in the many trendy coffee bars!

@@michaelcollins7313 The sense I got is that both of these realities bizarrely co-exist in Hackney today.

Your views are 30 years out of date

Thanks Dave! Yes the Cock Tavern definitely the best of the bunch here.

Perhaps I just hit it at a bad moment - it was a grey day and a weekday lunchtime after all - and maybe somebody who knew the area better might have chosen some nicer bits I missed... but what I did see I found mostly pretty grim.

Excellent MP too far better than Johnson the Clown

I'm voting for Diane Abbott. She came to defend the privatisation of our nurseries outside Hackney Town Hall a few months back. I really liked her.

It was a bit! Perhaps the weather didn't help, it was very grey, and I'm sure the atmosphere in the pubs would have been very different in the evening, rather than a weekday lunchtime... All of that said, I can't really say I'd be keen to go back to Hackney.

""Diversity Is Our Strength"".......Not.

Lower clapton road aka murder mile. North Hackney is now referred to by estate agents as the district named Cazanove....attempting to fool the buyer.😊😊😊😊

Hackney is where you go if you want to find an MP who represents her constituents, and has done for the last 30 years.

Yes I can't personally recommend Hackney if you have a similar taste in pubs to me - but I'm sure some people have a good time here!

@@TweedyPubs true haha